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Birmingham Comics Festival is aiming to celebrate Britain’s finest artists and writers, bring award-winning international creators to the UK for the first time and shine a light on the talents of tomorrow.

And organisers have now announced that Richard Elson will be making a rare public appearance at the festival.

Many have memories of Richard Elson’s fun art for Sonic the Hedgehog, while today’s readers wait for the latest weekly serial adventures he produces for 2000 AD or his drawings of such iconic superhero characters as Thor and Hulk for Marvel.

Despite several TV appearances demonstrating his art and the long queues that waited for him to sign copies of Sonic in the past, Richard had always avoided conventions so he could concentrate on business and family, and develop his craft into other media. The last few shows he did attend were visited anonymously to catch up with old friends.

"It would be wonderful to claim personal friendships influenced Richard Elson’s decision to once more attend comic book conventions," said a representative on behalf of the festival.

"But the truth is the timing is right.

"Richard’s decision to connect and engage in conversation personally with his current fans is an important social event in comicdom."

Sonic The Hedgehog art by Richard Elson

Richard, who's said to live in Worcester with his family, began his professional art career contributing strips to the weekly music newspaper Sounds before going to complete his studies in art.

Hired to draw Future Shocks and the Shadows series for 2000 AD and illustrations for Doctor Who Magazine he went on to do work on Marvel UK’s superhero line - drawing such characters as Motormouth and Killpower.

He was also the cover artist for their Spider-Man comics but moved more into the licensed comics area on books such as Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles.

The he found a niche drawing the exploits of Sonic the Hedgehog, first as a newspaper strip and then as the lead artist on Fleetway’s Sonic the Comic.

The results were a bestselling title, which kept Fleetway’s comics line afloat.

That was Richard’s career in children’s comics completed, if you exclude drawing the odd strip like Billy the Cat for The Beano for DC Thomson before his career took him back to the pages of 2000 AD.

For Britain’s top-selling science fiction he would go on to draw characters such as Judge Dredd, and develop popular series such as Avatar and Kingdom with writer Dan Abnett that would subsequently be collected in book form.

Kingdom drawn by Richard Elson

For a number of years Richard Elson’s work in comics was sidelined as he developed a career in toy design and licensed art concepts for major companies around the world.

A lifelong admirer of the art of the late Jack Kirby, he eventually sent samples to Marvel and they swooped him up, having him draw Marvel Zombies Return: Hulk, The Mighty Thor, Journey Into Mystery, and Morbius, the Living Vampire.

More recently, they called upon him to bring Marvel UK’s pantheon back into the mainstream Marvel Universe as artist on Revolutionary War.

Richard is currently illustrating strips for 2000 AD, working in the licensing world, and developing his own projects.

Richard Elson will be at the Birmingham Comics Festival taking place at Edgbaston Cricket Ground on Saturday, April 18, 2015 where he will be chatting with fans, signing comics as well as attending an exclusive convention signing. He has also expressed an interest in being part of talk events.